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Garnet has been abandoned for almost 100 years.

The tiny Montana outpost was established in the 1860s by miners looking for gold and silver, but it was devastated by fire around 1912 and deserted a few years later.

While the town has since been restored, it remains empty, and local folklore says the area is haunted by former residents, with visitors saying they heard music and laughter, even in winter, and the sound of doors slamming in cottages where there aren't any doors.

Now the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is offering free food, housing a job to people willing to live in Garnet and work as a tour operator, as the government prepares the village to become a new tourist stop.

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Ghost town coming back to life: The former mining town of Garnet in Montana was deserted after a fire in 1912. It is said to be haunted by some of its former residents, but is now set to boom once again and become a new tourist mecca. But workers are need to operate the place

New hot spot: The U.S. Bureau of Land Management in Missoula is offering free food, housing a job to people willing to live in Garnet and work as a tour operator, as the government prepares the village to become a new tourist stop.

Creepy: Local folklore says the area is haunted by former residents, with visitors saying they heard music and laughter, even in winter, and the sound of doors slamming in cottages where there aren't any doors

Abandoned: Garnet was restored after half the town was devastated by fire, but it remains deserted, even though there is a mine nearby

Ghostly: Locals say the spirits come out around midnight. Garnet has no electricity, so the new workers might be in for a fright

There are four positions, with some workers operating as tour guides and others keeping the grounds.

The job ad was first posted in local newspaper The Missoulian, expecting to only find interest from within Montana 

It stressed there was no electricity or plumbing.

Regardless, the story was almost immediately shared 32,000 on Facebook.

The following day, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's office in Missoula was inundated with calls and emails.

'The calls came in almost immediately,' BLM spokeswoman Maria Craig told The Missoulian.

'Garnet Ghost Town Ranger Nacoma Gainan told me the next morning he already had 130 emails and he didn't know how many phone calls. The phone was ringing all morning.

'We got people asking about it from South Africa, from China, the United Kingdom, Germany and all over the country.'

'There were more out-of-state people than Montanans calling.' 

Help wanted: The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is looking for volunteers to help manage Garnet Ghost Town, a Montana mining town more that's more than 100 years old, and has been mostly abandoned for nearly that long

Spooky: Garnet isn't a ghost town in name only: Rumors abound of real-life hauntings

Vacancies: The workers to volunteer to run Garnet will be put up in one of the cottages to live

Preparing: Once a mining town with a population of 1,000, Garnet is set to boom again as a tourist stop

Craig said that the working day wraps about 4.30pm, with the tourists leaving, giving the workers plenty of time to settle in before nightfall.  

She added that the job applications have now closed due to the overwhelming response, but was not clear whether the positions had been filled. 

Ellen Baumler, the Montana Historic Society's expert on all things creature comforts, wrote in her book, Montana Chillers, that the ghosts of Garnet would come out at midnight.

She said people had reported the sound of a piano and that winter visitors had seen visions, according to The Bulletin Standard.  

'Late at evening, the spirits of Garnet arrive out to enjoy in the moonlight,' Baumler wrote. 

'Sometimes, in the deep wintertime silent, a piano tinkles in Kelley's Saloon and the spirits dance to ghostly new music. 

'Men's voices echo in the empty rooms. But the moment a living, human hand touches the building, the noises stop.' 

Chilling: Interestingly, most of the spooky stories that surround Garnet have been reported in the winter

Janet Goodall, of Buffalo, New York, has worked at the Garnet visitor information center.

She told Fox News it was more just strange things occurring rather than ghosts that she heard in her time there. 

'I've seen visitors become friendly and helpful when unexpected things happen, like flat tires, empty gas tanks, keys locked in cars, minor injuries, and in one case, a diabetic faint,' she told the network.